Nomadic Matt’s ‘How To Monetize Your Travel Blog’

In the build-up to Christmas 2011, we began to fill our friends minds with our building hopes that at some point in 2012 we were both going to set off on our merry travels across the world & that whilst we were doing so, keeping everyone back at home up to date about our travel adventures with architecture, art, design & music along the way with a blog.

Two Names on Santa’s ‘Good’ List

Along came Christmas Day and an email from a close friend arrives in our inbox. It read:

Merry Christmas Guys!

As a token of my excitement for the two of you, I’ve been looking through all those blogs you’ve mentioned desperately looking for something useful for your travels – something you’re not going to have to box up when you get going.

Any left over pennies (if any) going to pay for a monthly celebratory bubble tea

Negatives –

Alienation of friends & family

Alienation of any community that grows out of interest in our travels

Turning more into a university advertising board than a blog

Drawing from this, the common thought was that making 500 friends and only 5 pence was certainly a better prospect than making £500 & only 5 new friends, and that we’d like to monetize the blog but carefully & only after reading the instructions of someone who really knows their stuff. So, we read through the book.

Each section is filled with the full in’s & outs for getting started, with the words of someone who’s already walked the same path before you, as company.

Franca building the blog in our hostel room headquarters

Creating Your Blog

From the starting point, it’s very clear that your purpose behind blogging or building a site must always remain clear, and through that clarity a good & trustworthy blog or site must rise, and with it, a strong brand – a crucial component for monetization in the future.

Installing & Building Your Blog

From which platform is most common to use, which designs are best for customisation, which host offers the best package, where to begin with plugins & what important facts to remember when buying your domain name; everything is covered to get beginners and the moderately internet-savvy alive off on the right foot.

enough traffic for you?

Finding Traffic

Traffic will find you, right? Not always.

Whilst you might be writing the best content since Tim Berners-Lee sent the first email, having an audience of none will lead to months of frustration and eventual abandonment of a blog.

Using Social Media Networks – like our very own Stumbleupon, Twitter, & Facebook – you can very quickly meet & talk with like minded people who will share your opinion, and who (hopefully) will continually return to give their two cents on your latest offering

Search Engine Optimization

Often spoken of but rarely understood, Search Engine Optimization (or SEO for short) is the butter that brings the cake together. Without it, you’ve still got a cake, but how good is it?

SEO is essentially all those keywords you type into Google when you’re searching for something; ‘new red hat’ as an example – should your content feature these words repeatedly & been visited frequently, you could be the first link displayed when people search on Google. Utilizing the right words and phrases in your content can lead to your writing being seen on the first page of a good search, rather than on page 100 where you’ll have only the hamster dance for company.

Nomadic Matt covers this & how to build-up your Google profile with links from other sites in detail.

I wonder if SEO tastes as good as this

How To Make Money With Your Site

Okay, here comes the icing to the cake.

– Making Money Will Not Happen Overnight –

Only after a lot of hard work & hours spent at the keyboard will anything begin to happen on the money-in-to-pocket front, but when that time does come; through the help of Nomadic Matt, programs like Google Adsense & private ad sales, will things hopefully work together to pay for that monthly bubble tea treat (fingers crossed!).

Price

$37/£23/€28 for the E-Book, Unlimited Revisions & Updates to the book (once to twice a year) – and probably the best add-on – Lifetime Email Support with the man himself should you become a little unstuck along the way.

emailing Matt for support – again

Summary

Getting the full how-to-and-why from arguably one of the leaders of the travel blogging business – a hard business to crack – from someone who built their brand from ground up can only be a recipe for success or at least a step in the best direction.

Some might call into question how much the book costs , but once you balance it out against the potential money you may make, how useful the two bonus features really are; you can soon come to the conclusion that it’s a small price to pay for the teachings of an expert who openly tells you their mistakes so you don’t have to make them too.

time for travel – and blogging

So there you have it. We’re still incredibly thankful to our friend for pushing us in the right direction, and even more thankful to Nomadic Matt for making our choices much-much easier.

We’ve chosen to monetize in a way that suits us, and through the book you can find a method of your own too – all with the help of Nomadic Matt’s – ‘How To Monetize Your Travel Blog’